Posts by Matthew Poole
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You're playing feature check-lists, and that's why you're misunderstanding the appeal of Apple products. The ideal is not to do everything, it's to do the right thing.
Of course I'm playing feature check-lists. I've already said I don't follow the Cult of the iJobs, so the Apple mystique gains no brownie points from me. I expect a device to do everything that something of a similar price will do, whether that's a heater, a phone, or a car. I am a consumer goods-manufacturer's worst nightmare, because I don't sway easily on branding or bling.
Also, how is not supporting MMS "the right thing"? Seriously, it's a long-established standard that you can get in nearly every other phone on the market. I'll accept that a decent camera could be tricky to shoehorn into such a crowded casing, but MMS is just code on the flash disk. Not much code, either, given the constraints of phones when it was first introduced.
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OS X isn't Windows, and it's not Unix.
Yes it is Unix. In the Utilities folder you will find an application called Terminal.
I'm a Linux Systems Administrator, so I'm quite familiar with Terminal. Thanks. What I meant by "It's not Unix" (yes, I know about the Open Group certification, too) is that it doesn't behave, and cannot be made to behave, like an X system. You can't do sloppy focus, or copy-on-select, or middle-click-pastes, or any of the stuff that I love about *nix and miss horribly on other platforms.
Don't get me started on having to reboot for updates, either. They took FreeBSD and slapped all the worst aspects of Windows on top!
I've been waiting for viruses for Macs to start coming out in a big way since 1984. There was a flutter in the early 90s and then they went away again.
They'll come. There's a trojan doing the rounds at the moment, apparently. As Macs increase in popularity it becomes more useful to find ways to violate them. Macs are certainly no more secure than Windows, as witnessed by the number and severity of the vulnerability announcements. That means there are ways to exploit them, and now all it needs is people with the resources and inclination to make it so. The Russian underworld surely has both, so I think that this time the threat won't just go away quietly like it has in the past.
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On the luxury good thing, the Cartier is functionally equivalent to a Swatch. A Ferrari is functionally equivalent (more or less) to an $80k Subaru.
But they're priced like luxury goods, and compete with luxury goods. The iPhone isn't. It's priced like a business-oriented smart phone, and cannot compete with them on many features. No MMS is just a total head-scratcher. My five-year-old Nokia 6230 does MMS. It's not like it's something new. The Ferrari will do everything that Subaru does (except, probably, cope with being rallied :P), and it'll do it with Italian style, leather interior, and a V10 or V12 burbling away to drown out the noises of the proles around you. The iPhone doesn't do everything the competition does and then some. It's the Ferrari at the 'ru price, but it's missing the gear knob (still got the stick, but nothing atop it) and the leather steering wheel, oh and you can only drive it in forwards, no reverse gear. It's nearly there, but not.
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FM radio in an mp3 player? What would be the point?
You'd have to ask every other MP3 player maker, I guess, coz Apple's the anomaly. I use the radio in my Creative Zen every so often.
When you're complaining about the cost of the iPhone please compare it to the cost of Blackberrys and high-range Nokia's because its not that much more expensive, and I would argue has more features - crappy camera or not.
So it has gestures, and works with iTunes. What other features? MMS? Nope. Java-based apps? Nope. Web standards like Flash? Nope. Video calling? Nope. It's pretty, and it's from Apple. Those are its "best" features over the competition. Yes it's at a comparable price to the N95 (and has twice the storage) but it's got a much crappier camera and other than gestures the N95 offers all the features and then some. Oh, and the N95 doesn't do iTunes, but it does to WMA which the iPhone doesn't.
The only thing the iPhone really has going for it at the top of the price range is its 16GB capacity. Which is good, because you can't add memory cards. Still can't change the battery yourself, either.
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baaaaa
I think you mean iBaaaaaa ;)
18 month contract with unlimited data
I would like to know just how "unlimited" that data actually is. Vodafone NZ used to have a data plan that was "unlimited", but the small print said that usage in excess of 1GB/month would be considered abuse of the network. That plan doesn't exist anymore, it's now the 1GB plan.
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Actually, I believe the total cost of ownership of an Apple computer is less than the equivalent performing Windows based machine. If I weren't at work i'd do some research to back that up.
Arguable. Certainly for Jo(e) Average home user it's very murky. For corporates with a dedicated IT infrastructure and associated support staff it's a bit more in Apple's favour. Because they (so far) don't get viruses constantly they're more robust and thus present a lower administration overhead. User training is required for Windows power users, no matter what the Cult members would have you believe. You can't just sit down in front of a Mac and be highly productive in Office, as an example, because it's so crazily different. To the point that it drives me spare. I'd rather login to a system with Office 2K3 over Terminal Services than try and figure out some of the crap that goes on with Office for Mac. Admittedly I don't use Office very much, so I don't have the familiarity born of day-by-day usage, but it's still wildly different to Office for Windows. OS X isn't Windows, and it's not Unix. So for users schooled in both it's a nasty in-between place to try and live. Maybe I'm just too difficult to please because I'm a deep geek not just a plebe user?
Plus, once viruses for Macs start coming out in a big way that TCO will shoot up. AV software, mandatory updates, etc, all the greatest "features" of Windows will happen for OS X.
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I guess what Apple/VF are doing is no different to what Cartier, Hermes and Ferrari do with their products. A Cartier watch probably costs low four figures to put together, and they sell it for $20k.
But the iPhone 3G costs less than USD200 to make. It has a shit camera. It's not a particularly great example of anything, except marketing.
At least with Cartier and Ferrari you're getting a product that has only a small handful of alternatives. The iPhone is unique only in that it's made by Apple. Cellphones, even smart phones, are a commodity.
Maybe I'm genetically defective, but I just don't get the fawning adulation over the iJobs. Apple products are just examples of whichever product category they happen to be in. They don't even put decent displays on the 20" iMacs, FFS!
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i do have a problem with the view that we shouldn't even try [for a conviction]
But what is enough? Are you saying that unless the police drag him into court on charges, not enough has been done to try? Because I will be highly fucked off if tens-of-thousands of dollars are thrown at a prosecution that's doomed from the start. Bringing a criminal case is not cheap, and the standard for deciding that a jury should hear the evidence is hopefully higher than "He's a celebrity, the minuscule chances of a conviction be damned."
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The stupid one with the Vice Chancellor was the real VC, thankfully he's gone now, and not just because of the bad advert.
You can have ours. We don't want him, honest. I don't think even the staff want him, and the students definitely don't. In less than the length of a basic undergraduate degree he's managed to make himself roughly as popular as a pork pie at a Jewish wedding.
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To drag this all the way back over to on-topic, is it bad that I actually didn't know off the top of my head who Tony Veitch is? That I couldn't pick him as anything other than a vaguely-familiar name until I watched last night's news (which I actually turned on for the discussion about Beijing!) and saw the press conference?
I feel so horribly out of touch with pop culture at times like this, when even a "celebrity" TV personality is a fuzzy name association at the back of my mind.